How to use our chat room feature. If you want more information on how the chat feature works, view our screencast here.

How to Moderate Your Chat Room: Managing a chat room, although potentially easier with a co-host, can also be done effectively when you are hosting solo. If you have a co-host, while you are speaking, he or she can actively monitor and interact with listeners in the chat room. If you are hosting alone, we recommend interacting with your chatters while you are playing an audio file, or when special guests are speaking.

How to Engage Your Chat Room: Be sure to welcome the participants of your chat room at the beginning of the show to get the discussion started. You can also encourage people to type their questions and comments into the chat room, if they are shy about calling in. It is good practice to continue to welcome new chatters at various times throughout the show as you notice them joining in. To save time, pre-type messages in a document, and cut and paste into the chat window while you are on the air.

Another way to engage listeners is to highlight something covered on the show and ask your audience to share what they think in the chat room, or offer related questions or facts about your guest or relevant topics.

Manage Live Q&A: If you have callers dialing in, you can ask them to private message you in the chat room with their name and phone number so that you can announce them properly when you bring them onto your show. You can also encourage listeners to use the chat room as an alternative way to submit questions.

Opening your chat room takes a quick click of the mouse, and can increase your listener engagement and show’s sense of community by leaps and bounds.